


Caldera

by eldritcher



Series: Red Falls The Dew On These Silver Leaves [9]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 06:12:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sauron travels to Eregion to doom the city and its lord both. That Celebrimbor had been his only friend is a small matter easily discounted. Really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caldera

Caldera - a large crater left in the wake of volcanic explosion.

 

“Lord Manwë is sovereign and my word cannot suffice to judge you leniently,” Eönwë said as we discussed terms of my surrender.

The defeat, I had long known, had been inevitable. Melkor had been undaunted by the might of the West. Perhaps he had counted on the aid of a woman who had never failed to betray him when need arose. It was irony indeed that my life would be dictated by the follies of other men’s hearts when I had never allowed myself to be dictated by my heart’s whim. 

“I did never understand why you-” Eönwë shrugged in evident discomfort. He and I had been acquaintances and closer. This meeting was unsettling him more than it unsettled me. “Was it ambition?”

“Manwë is omniscient,” I said cuttingly. “Your questions must be asked of him. I am a liar, after all.”

Eönwë met my daring gaze, his own eyes simmering in thought. Then he said, “I am married to Nerdanel. My beliefs have changed, you will find.”

“You never could resist a damsel in distress, could you?” 

It was a weak jibe. A taunt undeserved. He had found his happiness. It shone in his eyes. I looked away. 

“She is the last woman you can call a damsel in distress,” Eönwë said, affection for her washing his voice mellow. 

I resisted the urge to flee the sight of his contentment. He did not deserve it. Many deserved my loathing, but not Eönwë, who had not a bone of malice in his body. His fault, if one could call it that, was his desire to believe in the goodness within. It reminded me of Telpë, whom I liked for the same trait. It reminded me of Elerrína. And it reminded me of a young, infatuated warrior whom I had failed to purge from my memories despite all my efforts. 

“Make it last,” I told him. I could not bring myself to congratulate him, or to acknowledge his happiness aloud.

“He has been judged thrice,” Eönwë said tentatively. I looked up to meet his gaze and knew instinctively whom he spoke of.

“And?” I whispered, my voice failing me all of a sudden.

“He would not foreswear the regard he holds you in. So they have denied him eternal rest in the halls.” 

Eönwë rose to his feet and wisely retreated to a careful distance. He was not a fool. I had been always unpredictable when it came to this subject and he knew that.

And the fool I had embraced my fall for - the noble fool that he always had been - he had not foresworn me even when I had torn his heart and thrown it to the vultures. I shot to my feet and strode over to Eönwë, grasping his shoulders and shaking him hard, spittle flying from my mouth as I shouted at him.

“If Manwë can forgive Varda for the damn love she has for Melkor, then why would they deny a valiant man his peace for the same reason?”

Eönwë did not attempt to fight me off. He stood there, calm and sad, as I railed at him, at fate, at the Gods, at myself and at the bloody fool who had danced wilfully all over my heart leaving me to fall alone.

“You and I are the unluckiest of Eru’s creations, would you not say?” 

It was a voice that I had etched into my mind. I knew its variations. I knew its low whispers and quiet tones. I knew how hoarse it turned in screams and how broken it became on death’s threshold. I knew the voice and I knew him. Swiftly, I spun around to meet the calm, grey eyes that held hell and bliss equally in their depths.

His fingers were clutching his father’s thrice-cursed jewel to his chest. He was unarmed, I noticed absently. 

“Your fingers burn!” Eönwë exclaimed as he stepped past me. “Drop the jewel! Your blood-taint will not let you touch the jewel.”

“I know,” said the Prince. “Eönwë, you would do me a favour if you were to give Mother the letter I have left on the desk where you had kept the Silmarilli.”

“You cannot presume to command me!” Eönwë blustered.

“Consider it a dying man’s last whim.”

I moved forward then, seeing for myself the pitiful state he was in. He was dying, of course. I could see it in his eyes, and in the trembling body that had weakened to a mere shadow of his former strength. Melkor’s poison had finally achieved its results. 

“Where is the other jewel?” Eönwë asked. “The periphery is guarded well. You will be killed, Nelyafinwë. Give up this charade and let us discuss surrender. He has seen sense.” This was accompanied by a wave in my direction. 

“Once more we meet under the cloud of Atalantë,” the Prince murmured as he met my gaze. 

“Will you have your mother grieve your fall?” Eönwë asked him. “For her sake!”

“You cannot hoodwink me with a woman’s grief,” said the Prince and I thought of the woman who had given her life to ensure his survival. How many had he pawned? Had he ever known a moment free of repentance? The grey eyes flickered back to meet mine and I knew that he and I were indeed the unluckiest of creations.

“If you parley, you can prolong your life,” I said then, spurred by the maelstrom of emotions that I had taken great pains to subdue all through my existence.

“Ah, but I have no need. Once I walked with the dawn. Now the night remains.” He caressed the jewel with his charring fingers. “We hallowed our Gods. They destroyed us. Never again.” The white fire of his heart seared me as it had once seared Melkor and wrested the deepest secret of my lord’s existence. “Golden cages cannot hold one who did not call the sunbeam bright.”

“Russandol!”

Molten gold. Eönwë closed his eyes in grief as the Prince flinched and instinctively turned towards the direction of the voice. A torturer knows a man more intimately than any lover ever can and I knew the Prince. I knew the emotion that flashed in his eyes for an instant before he masked it with his usual suavity. He narrowed his gaze as he understood what he had let slip.

“You are not the only coward who ran away,” he said softly. “Love in excess brings no man honour or worthiness.”

“And I am not the only fool who embraced destruction for the sake of another,” I replied. “Find your peace, Prince.”

He nodded to me - a gesture intended to convey more than words ever could. Then he ran out of the tent, the jewel clutched to his breast with those charred fingers and his face set in the iron determination forged of Angband’s fire. 

“We weep for those who cannot weep,” said Eönwë then and I turned to find tears glistening in his eyes.

“The herald of Manwë will weep for a blasphemer who defied all that Valinor stands for?” 

“I weep for those who cannot walk with the dawn again.”

I inhaled then. From without, we could hear the cries of the Elves who were trying to chase and confront the jewel-thieves. Eönwë’s guards were not kinslayers. They would shirk when flesh touched sword. But those they fought now held no such compunction. The sons of Fëanáro had seen and shed blood too long to be moved by it any more. 

“I will not parley,” I told Eönwë. “I will remain behind.”

“I knew.”

He had known. The Prince had known. Golden cages cannot hold one who called not even the sunbeam bright. 

 

The lands had been ravaged by the wrath of the Valar. Beleriand was no more. I remembered the first time I had seen the fair plains of Beleriand - where the Sindarin nomads had wandered and sung of simple joys, where Melyanna had held a people together with her unfailing heart, where the Noldorin Princes had come with their agenda of revenge and domination, where I had fought and slain and captured, where I had defiled more than I cared count, where I had seen my lord brought down by white fire and where I had committed my last act of wilful compassion.

Now were fissures, floods and craters left in the wake of the reshaping of the land. Not a sliver of life remained in the desolation. But there was lamentation, lamentation as I had never heard it before. In a voice broken and bereft, wept the kneeling bard for his loss, his head upturned to the unfeeling stars and his hands clenched into the still smoking ash beside his thighs. The jewel of his father and I remained the only witnesses on this forsaken land. I walked to his side and looked down into the fiery chasm that he knelt on the verge of. 

“What is there to keep me from leaping in after him?” my companion ruminated.

“A vow?” I asked quietly. His brother had been an excellent judge of character and would have known what vow to exact.

“He told me that we cannot know if life be that which men call death and death what men call life,” he murmured.

“He told me once that we can hoodwink the Gods with fool’s gold,” I replied softly. “Perhaps he did.”

My companion sighed and rose to his feet, picking up the jewel with a scarred hand. 

“Shall you try to wrest it from me?” he enquired.

I met his gaze and immediately looked away. 

“I touch not what is hallowed,” I replied bleakly. 

“Mean you the jewel? It is no longer hallowed. He,” his voice was shaky, “parleyed with Varda to ensure that.”

“I meant not the jewel. I meant you. He hallowed you with his fall.”

The grief of a man was not an easy thing to behold. The grief of a man like Macalaurë Fëanorion was one of the hardest things to look upon. He had loved, as Laurefindë had loved. The Prince had considered himself unworthy of the regard, even as I had. So we had returned their pure love with our falls that hallowed them. We would not walk with the dawn anymore, the Prince and I. But those we loved so desperately would never be denied the sunrise. And so, we had regretted nothing. It was a fair price.

“It was never a fair price,” said Macalaurë Fëanorion in a voice colder than the ice of Helcaraxë.

Was it not?

 

I had not come a very great distance from the volcano when I heard a woman’s voice accosting me. Surprised, I turned. Women rarely discerned me and even those who did never endeavoured to gain my mercy for it was nonexistent. 

“Sauron,” said she who joined me then. I knew her immediately. The secret conspirator who had helped me plot the fall of the hidden city. 

“Itarillë,” I acknowledged. “I had thought that you sailed west with your husband.”

“Idril,” she said quietly. “I sailed, but I never reached the west. How could I, when my heart remains in Beleriand?”

“Beleriand is no more,” I told her. “You had best sail. There is a mass forgiveness phenomenon in the offing.”

“I heard of your parley,” she said.

“You have contacts in the upper echelons then?” I enquired, suddenly interested as to her purpose.

“Middle-earth does not kindly treat lovelorn repentant sinners.”

“Perhaps,” I said cautiously.

“For a poor price, you can gain my aid in your schemes. You know that I shall be of use.”

“I have had dealings with your family in the past and came off poorer. Forgive me if I say that I would rather not tangle with you.” 

We parted on those uneasy terms. Yet I knew from the cold determination in her eyes that it was not our last meeting. And then returned to these forsaken shores a certain fool who could never stay out of trouble. When Idril met me again many years later, she greeted me with a smile for she knew that I could not naysay her if she threatened the only thing I held dear. I could have killed her. I could have had her killed. But she was powerful in her own way. The eastern people considered her their oracle. If I desired to make my realm in Mordor, then I needed her tolerance.

“What are your terms?” I demanded.

“Lay Eregion to waste,” she said quietly. 

I stared at her. Eregion; the land they called Hollin. Telpë had achieved his dream of a craftsman’s guild there. I had heard tidings of his meteoric rise to fame in the early years of the Second Age. The blood of Finwë did not lend itself to a low profile. Spurred on by Ereinion Gil-Galad’s aid and the counsel of Artanis, Telpë had built a city for his craftsmen. He held commerce with the Naugrim even as Carnistro had. But there was a difference. Telpë, being the unprejudiced naive man he was, had begged the Naugrim to agree to sharing their craft. I had no doubt that in return he would teach them all he knew. Where Fëanáro was selfish, Telpë was selfless. 

“I was a craftsman once, Idril,” I told her. “I know their hearts. They pose no threat to us. Lindon should be our next step.”

“Lindon can wait,” she said. “Take Eregion. Galadriel will be half of what she is if her favourite nephew is captured alive.”

“I never take prisoners,” I said sharply. 

I was speaking the truth, for once. I did not take prisoners. I had no need to. My alliance with Idril ensured that black sorcery and blood sacrifice was now done in her realm without necessitating my involvement.

“You shall have to make an exception.”

Telpë was too gentle a soul. Why did Idril hate him so fiercely? I tried to probe her mind, but was cast out easily with a scornful look.

We did not all rise in love. A rare few, as Laurefindë and Macalaurë, rose in love whatever the odds were. But the rest of us were condemned to bitterness. I knew Idril because I knew the bitterness pulsing in her veins. The same pulsed in mine.

“Very well then.”

 

My armies were not unassailable then. Idril’s armies lay to the southeast and could not aid me in the far west where Eregion was. Unveiling myself at this juncture would be folly. Ereinion Gil-Galad was the son of his valorous father. Elrond Eärendillion, I had heard, was the King’s Herald. I had heard tales of the son of Eärendil. He was as blasphemous and daring as his fosterers were. That, if nothing else, cautioned me against exposing my identity to him. Then there was Círdan, privy to Ulmo’s counsel. Considering all these, an army, I decided, could have no place in my plans.

There was disguise. Telpë was not a fool. He would discern my identity whatever guise I shaped myself into. How would I earn his trust? My prior encounters with those of his illustrious family would not endear me to him.

I continued brooding on the dilemma. Eregion reached the noon of its life. I heard from my spies that Idril was plotting something in Mithlond. At the harbour city was biding a certain man. I acted then. 

 

“Oh, very well!” Telpë’s vexed voice rang in the dim forge. “Bring him to me then. But the next time you interrupt my work, I shall send you as an aide to my aunt.”

The servant bade me approach the smith. I cleared my throat and wondered at the irony of destiny once again. That he who had been my only friend in an age long past would be my victim - I suppressed my thoughts and instead turned my mind to the present.

“Only a moment,” Telpë murmured, not taking his eyes from the glittering metal at the end of the tongs. “I do apologise.”

I did not reply, instead watching his features outlined against the forge fire. He was thinner than the last time I had seen him. The callow grace of youth had fallen away to noble austerity and a forehead stamped with worry lines of many losses borne and survived. How many of them had been of my making?

Then he looked up and his black eyes turned wide in astonishment and he hastily transferred the locket he had been forging to the mantel before wiping off his hands on his apron. A pleasantly surprised grin broke on his features and I saw that he had more laugh lines about his eyes than worry lines on his forehead. 

“Mairon!” 

I flinched. The last man of his family who had addressed me thus had done so in remarkably outré circumstances and it had upturned my comfortable life of self-created delusions. 

“Annatar,” I tried feebly.

He frowned before shrugging and coming to embrace me, uncaring of my stiffness within the hold of his arms. 

“Oh, Mairon, I thought you had sailed west with Eönwë!” he exclaimed, stepping back and tilting his head to inspect my travel-worn features. “They said you repented!” He frowned again. I could see his mind whirling as he remembered my sins of the past. His eyes darkened and with a pensive sigh, he returned his attention to the locket he had been occupied with.

“Old habits die hard, don’t they?” he asked me then. “You have come to destroy me.”

“You once expressed a desire to work in tandem with me,” I rallied weakly. I had known that he could not be fooled. He might not have been his uncle. But he was his grandfather’s progeny, all the same. 

“That was before you destroyed my family!” he shouted, clenching his fists and striding away from me. 

I exhaled. It was time to use the last ploy. Idril had not known of it. Melkor had not known of it. It was a secret, but Telpë had never given away another’s secret. 

“Before I left Valinor, Irmo told me that Nelyafinwë Fëanorion pawned me to Melkor to save his father,” I said quietly. He flinched and I knew I had scored. It was as I had suspected. He had known of Irmo’s wiles and of his uncle’s scheming. “If I have aided Melkor, Telpë, it was because that was precisely what your uncle sold me into.”

Silence fell between us, uncomfortable and loud in its quietness. I carefully watched the emotions chasing each other across Telpë’s expressive face. 

“Maitimo did what was necessary to protect us,” he said finally.

“And I did what was necessary to survive,” I replied. “We cannot all be chivalrous men like you, Telpë, even if I wish it were so.”

“What brings you here?” he asked, still brooding over my words. 

“I believe I have already spoken my purpose,” I said suavely. “To work with you, no more and no less.”

“Mairon, you are a liar.” He crossed his arms and fixed me with a stern glare. 

“Ada!” 

A young girl’s lisp followed by the patter of dainty feet across the hard forge floor. I watched in fascination as chubby arms came to enfold Telpë’s legs in a familiar manner. His forbidding expression faded to benevolence and he turned around to pick up the squirming bundle of a precocious child into his arms.

“Evading your minders again, Arwen?” he chided her softly. 

“But I missed you!” This proclamation was followed by the press of plump lips against his cheeks. “Didn’t you miss me?”

“Every moment, child,” he assured her before tousling her soft raven curls. 

“I did not know,” I said, rather unsettled by this familial scene. 

“Who is this?” the child asked with her endearing lisp as she stumbled over the words. Too young - and yet younger children had I killed in cold blood. 

Telpë frowned as he tried to think of a suitable answer. But the child tugged at him allowing him no respite and he muttered, “An old acquaintance.”

“What is that?” she demanded then, peering at me in deep curiosity. I wondered if I should smile. 

“Set me down,” she commanded him then. 

He sighed and complied, his eyes holding only love for the child. She traipsed over to me and I took a wary step back. Young as she was, she did not lack the steel of Finwëan determination, I found to my chagrin in the next instant when she tugged at my calf-length boots and looked up with those large eyes of hers.

“She wants you to lift her into your arms,” Telpë translated his child’s actions dully. “Arwen, come here. He does not like children.”

“I think your father has jumped to conclusions,” I told the child

Then I lifted her gingerly into my arms. She squealed and laughed and her curls tickled my wrists. Telpë made an exclamation of worry and hurried over. His concern was well-warranted, for it was the first time I had attempted this and I was overwhelmed by the softness of her skin and the starlight that seemed to be caught ever within her eyes.

“I like him, Ada,” she declared imperiously and kissed my cheek. 

I flinched again and stared in horror at Telpë, begging him silently to rescue me from the child’s attentions. She was her father’s daughter, as selfless and capable of love as he was. Warm, bonny hands came to twine about my neck and she placed her cheek under my jaw, emitting a soft yawn of exhaustion.

“Arwen,” Telpë began sternly.

“Let me,” I begged him. 

He did not reply, but I took that as assent and began singing softly. I had sung only twice in my life. The first was a song that Melyanna used to sing in the gardens of Irmo. I had sung it when I had tried to calm the storm in the Prince’s torn mind after Melkor had destroyed it. The second was a lamentation when I had cremated a woman who had suffered for causes she had not an inkling of.

I could not sing the threnody now. So I sang the first song, the same song I had used to comfort a broken man ever so long ago.

 

“Sleep, sleep, happy child,  
You were born when all creation smiled,  
Merry, merry sparrow under leaves so green,  
Oh, look at him, look at him, how he preens!  
Sleep, sleep, happy child,  
You were born when all creation smiled.”

 

The girl nodded off and Telpë’s hands came to gently pry her away from me. His features were set in thought and I knew I had won. The way to Telpë’s heart was through his daughter. I was cruel. But I did what I needed to. Eregion had to fall. I needed Idril’s aid to bolster my position in the east. Númenor was a concern. Lindon was a nightmare. I needed my allies. Idril was my strongest ally. Moreover, I stood to gain equally as she did, if not more, from this gambit. The fall of Telpë would herald the end of the male scions of the elder house of Finwë. The bloodlines had weakened. That would leave me with a weakened Artanis and an impulsive Gil-Galad. I was more than their match. 

“I shall take my leave, milord,” I told Telpë politely as he turned to leave with his child safely nestled in his arms. 

He cleared his throat and met my gaze uncomfortably before murmuring, “She likes you. Stay until she wakes and then bid her farewell.”

I nodded. The girl, then, would be my pathway. Telpë left without another word and I felt a strange pang of guilt as the child’s soft, raven curls bounced gently with his strides. 

I steeled my mind. Eregion would fall.

* * *

Telpë and I remained estranged. But I had formed a rapport with the other smiths and I knew I did not need his support any longer. His indulgence of Arwen’s whims had given me his hospitality for a month which was all that I needed to make friends in the upper echelons of the craft guild.

It was a myth that Elves did not desire power. Everyone, be that Vala or Maia Elf or Edain or Nogoth, desired power. The extent to which one could tame this desire was what made a man, or broke him. Ambition was as fire, a poor master. Fire, be it the purity of Fëanáro, or the white cruelty of Nelyafinwë, lent itself to subjugation more than domination. I knew nothing of Fëanáro, of course. But I had known the Prince and his need to trust was a manifestation of the need to tame the fire within.

Telpë, of course, would have nothing to do with me. He wrote an epistle to his dear cousin Gil-Galad regarding my rising influence in the council. What the High-King sent as response was a sentimentally miserable message in which he proclaimed that he held the torch of undying love for his Chief Counsellor. This I knew, because I had already won over the messengers to my side.

Telpë then wrote a letter seeking counsel and despatched it to Lothlórien. Artanis was unfortunately in seclusion with her husband following the bloom of one of their more romantic periods. Their marriage, I had to note, was always the most popular item on the Elven rumour-mills.

It was then that Narvi came to Eregion. Of course, Narvi and Telpë were very close friends even before my arrival. Their partnership in the forge was legendary. My friends in the upper echelons of the guild had warned me not to make an enemy of Narvi. 

 

“Oh, do tell me again!” Arwen implored me as I regaled her with yet another tale of knights, villains and damsels in distress.

“Which part?” I enquired. “We have only time for one. It is nearly dusk.”

“The part of the villain!” she decided. “You did that well.”

“I have experience,” I noted wryly. Then I proceeded to entertain her with the rough drawls and the dire threats made by the villain in the story.

The faint glimmer of crystal shone in her eyes then and it flashed across her face. She blinked and looked past me. I turned to see the source of this reflection. Then she clapped her hands in delight and jumped off her bowseat before rushing to embrace the dour-faced Nogoth who stood there. In his hands he held a pretty crystal necklace which he now gruffly placed about her neck. 

“Ada missed you so!” she said. “Did you miss Ada, Narvi?”

“He is an Elf,” Narvi muttered. “Elves miss things. The rest of us learn to get by.”

“This is my new friend.” Arwen tugged Narvi across the terrace to where I stood. “Annatar.”

“Lord of Gifts?” Narvi’s tufty eyebrows went up. He glared at me none too benevolently and said, “Come with me, child. Mixing with strange folk never did anyone good. But your Ada never listens to sense, does he?”

“My music teacher says that it is because Ada does not have a woman,” Arwen supplied helpfully. 

“He has you,” Narvi said. “That is all he needs. That is all anyone needs.” His eyes came back to glare at me. “So where hail you from, Annatar?”

“From the west,” I replied courteously. “From the lands where-”

“Cut the poetry,” Narvi told me. “Never trust a smoothspeaker, I say!”

“Narvi!” 

It was Telpë now, his features aglow with pure happiness as he came to greet his friend. “Was your journey quiet?”

“It is not a great distance, you silly man,” Narvi said sternly. “Now stop being a mother-hen and take the child inside. She will catch a chill if she stays in the evening breeze.”

“But my teacher says that Elves do not catch chills,” Arwen interrupted.

“I will be having words with this teacher of yours, young one,” Narvi promised ominously. 

Telpë chuckled and shook his head before drawing his friend into mansion. Arwen waved to me and clutched Narvi’s hand tightly. The girl had strange tastes, I had to concede. There was her fascination with villains, there was her acceptance of me and now there was her ease with an irascible Nogoth. If Telpë had been half as proud as Turkáno, then Arwen would turn into another Idril. But Telpë was a dotard and would allow his daughter to marry a Nogoth if that was her wish. 

With effort, I paused my thoughts in the direction and returned to the problem of Narvi. 

 

The next day, I was reading Telpë’s intercepted correspondence when came along the man himself and Narvi. Concealed as I was in an alcove, they did not see me. 

“I don’t trust Annatar,” Narvi was saying. “But when has an Elf listened to a Dwarf in matters not concerning gold?”

“Be fair,” Telpë said. “I have always respected your counsel.”

“Throw him out, Telpë.” Narvi’s voice had turned deeper. “I claim none of what your kind call foresight and premonition. But I know danger when I see it. Your giver of gifts means ill. Throw him out.”

“It is not as easy as that,” Telpë muttered. “The guild is under his control, Narvi. My hands are tied.”

“You know him?”Narvi asked. “You have a strange reluctance to cast him out.”

“He was a friend once. My first friend.”

“That is quite enough of your sentimental wallowing, silly man!” Narvi chided him. “Throw the man out and I will bequeath all my secrets of trade to you ere I die.”

“You hate him deeply then,” Telpë remarked.

“I don’t care a whit for him. It is simply my lot to drag you out of trouble.”

“I miss Artanis.”

“There, lad! There is more of your sentimentalism now! Wipe that sick longing out of your face and come with me to dinner like a proper man should. I am leaving tomorrow morning and I need my rest. We cannot all sing to the stars this night and then sing to the sun the next morning.”

“I needed to ask a boon of you, Narvi,” Telpë said quietly. “I have nobody else to ask this of.”

“Aulë help me, what will I do with an Elf-maiden in a mine?” Narvi threw his stubby arms out in despair. “But mark my words, Telpë, not even Aulë can stand in my way if you don’t let me take her from this cauldron!”

“My gratitude,” Telpë whispered and I flinched at the breaking of his voice. “I shall never repay you enough, old friend.”

“Keep your senses awake, lad. That is payment enough.” Narvi ventured a brisk pat to his friend’s wrist. “My family will raise the girl as one of my own. Send for her when your troubles are over.”

“You will not-” Telpë broke off wistfully.

“I cannot come again.” Narvi’s voice was sad and gruff. “My joints creak and my bones ache. The sleep of the earth calls me, Telpë.”

“No man ever had a worthier friend,” Telpë whispered before kneeling and embracing the Nogoth. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“You are a fool,” Narvi declared. “I am your friend because you are mine. You would have done the same for me anyday. Now let go unless you want your people to think that your eccentricities have extended to bedding one of the uncouth folk.”

“You are not uncouth,” Telpë protested. 

“Yes, yes.” Narvi suffered another embrace before nudging Telpë away. “Now get up and come with me to dinner. I cannot sup on sentiments alone.”

Narvi was a strange man. But he was a determined one. He spirited away Arwen the next morning and that left Telpë free to start his campaign against me. Narvi was cunning where Telpë was not, for the doughty Nogoth sent a summons to Artanis.

 

Artanis reached after two months and directly came over to the guild to confront me. Clad in her travelling cloak and worn out by the journey, she was not the woman I remembered from days in Valinor. Telpë trailed her, worry flitting across his features.

“What is your purpose?” she demanded.

“I beg your pardon, milady,” I said suavely. “I do not believe I have the honour of your acquaintance.”

Blue eyes flashed wrathfully and she said in a low voice, “I will give you a day’s reprieve. You shall have left Eregion by then.”

“The guild is mine, Artanis,” I told her. Her eyes narrowed and she turned to face Telpë whose hapless expression gave away the truth.

“It is a waiting game then,” she remarked.

“Waiting never sat well with the blood that runs in your veins, Artanis,” I goaded her.

“Perhaps my blood was cooled by the Helcaraxë,” she said calmly. “Come, Telpë. Are you still amenable to offering me the refreshments that I rudely refused in my haste to meet the Lord of Gifts?”

She was an opponent worthy of the game. The first stroke that befell me nearly broke my resolve. She summoned her niece and the warrior who was courting this niece. 

“Menelwen, daughter of my cousin, Macalaurë,” Artanis said coolly as she introduced the young woman to me at the official welcome ceremony. “And her betrothed, Glorfindel, formerly Laurefindë of the hidden city. This, of course,” she waved at me, “is the current leader of the guild in the city. Annatar - the Lord of Gifts.”

Menelwen greeted me. She bore a striking resemblance to Nerdanel, I noticed, the last shreds of my resolve not letting my gaze wander to the one who accompanied her on this journey.

But I could feel the intensity of the green pools I had once been blessed to bask in. I turned tail and fled the dancing floor, though there had been a speech scheduled in the name of the guild. 

 

I paced the floor of my chambers angrily that night, wondering how Artanis knew. Macalaurë Fëanorion might have known. The Prince had known. But never among the many flaws of the sons of Fëanáro was voiced a betrayal of secrets of another’s heart. No, Artanis had deduced it all by herself. Her powers of perception, I realised, were deeper than any had fathomed. I had to bring her down.

A knocking on the door drove my thoughts away. It might have an eternity, but I knew the knock. Gathering the few paltry threads of my determination that remained, I stopped pacing and remained still. Let him think that I had retired and was unavailable. I had absolutely no intention of putting myself within a hundred yards of him.

Then hell broke loose. 

He - being the stubborn, idealistic, stupid fool that he was - rammed into the door. The door had been built for screening the occupant’s privacy. It had not been designed to withstand assault, and the architect certainly had not considered a fool’s charge. Wooden splinters drew blood, I noticed in detached horror as he rushed in and I exclaimed. Before I could get any further, he had launched himself atop me, throwing me down and smashing my wrists taut on the wooden floor high above my head. I gasped at the pain and then uttered a cry of protest as he drew a length of rope from his breeches before proceeding to knot my hands to the leg of a heavy, iron table

“Not a sound from you,” he warned. 

So many had I destroyed and pushed into the abyss of fading through means like these. But right then, with his heat covering me all over, with his fingers mapping my features and his mouth spewing a litany of curses, I did not fear at all for myself. I only feared for him.

“You cannot,” I tried to tell him. “Don’t be a fool.”

He undid his tunic and wadded it into a thick ball before forcing my jaws to clench on it. My muffled voice and jagged breathing did not unsettle him at all. I tried to close my eyes, but with the sight of his body rearing above me, golden and glorious as it always had been, I knew that I could not close my eyes even if my life depended on it. He disrobed me with a passion that had always overwhelmed me and I tried to writhe away from his grasp as his fingers kneaded my flanks.

I could have thrown him away. I could have overpowered him. But I chose to do neither. I had only used force once in our relationship. It had been at our last meeting before I had left Valinor. 

He entered me swiftly, mercilessly and without the least of warnings. I jerked at the sudden fullness and my body fought the brutality imposed. But he did not relent, not even when sweat had pooled into the hollows of my collarbones and my navel. Hands came to my loins, plying what I had always controlled with my mental strength and arousing me into unbearable excitation. The pain of his invasion, the sharp pulling back of foreskin by his calloused fingers, the grip of one of his hands on my bruised hipbone, the ramming of my head against the floor repeatedly and the searing pain in my hands as I drew taut and pulled desperately at the restraint - I closed my eyes and tried to find a haven of mental peace where I could bide till this was over. 

But he would have none of that. He slapped me and pinched my chest and bent over to draw my lower lip into his mouth until my eyes shot open and revealed all to him. He slapped me again then and my throat constricted of its own accord. I gulped and tried to compose myself, for weakness was too near and I could not dare it. His fingers came to my throat and closed around it before he rammed me back against the floor and drove the breath out of my lungs with his iron grip on my neck. I shook my head madly and he released the pinion-like grip. Gasping, shaken and shattered beyond words, I closed my eyes and let him ride me as he saw fit. He shifted ever so slightly and the angle wrought a change for worse as each thrust rubbed against the gland that was the bane of our gender. I lost myself to the frenzy of lust and began arching in an effort to gain more of the sensation. He plucked the wad of cloth from my mouth and rode me to completion. When orgasm claimed me, it was with a scream that might have shattered glass - a scream that was a name which was the only blessing of my life as well as the worst curse. 

The scream broke me and I cringed mentally as my chest heaved up and down in uncontrollable tremors, each worse than the previous one. His hands turned gentle where they had been brutal earlier and fingers ran now in my hair attempting to calm me down. When he ventured to release my hands from their restraint, I brought their uncoordinated fingers to the only place they had ever craved to be - on his face. 

His green eyes were darker now, shaded into many hues by suffering, death and grief inexpressible in words. He did not deny me when I mapped his cheeks or traced his eyes. I closed my eyes unable to bear his stricken regard and the hot splash on my forehead broke another dam in me. I had not cried for the worst of my sins. But when his tears fell on my cheeks, I fell apart into a wretched mass of sobs. 

“I never-” I had lost all coordination between mind and body. The heart I had thought incinerated by darkness and determination now rose again, beating amidst the ashes. 

“I never stopped-,” I tried again.

“Neither did I.”

He kissed me then, unforgiving and ungentle. I took it willingly - I deserved that and more and no payment would ever suffice. His hands then came to gently rub at my wrists and I flinched as fingers roamed over the welts born of restraint. I remembered the marks on Elerrína’s hands - the marks of manacles and claws of my minions. I remembered the bonds of iron and enchantment that had brought the Prince low and defiled him beyond salvation. 

Kisses were pressed to my wrists then and I withheld my tears with effort. I deserved worse than what I had meted out to others. But the one who kissed me now did not deserve my taint at all. 

“You should marry the woman,” I whispered. “She is of high blood.”

“That is a strange reason to marry a woman,” he told me before rolling me around and raising my hips into the air. “Did I hurt you?” His eyes were probing what he had earlier ravaged.

I did not resist him, not even when he surreptitiously inserted a finger to see if he had drawn blood. He muttered to himself and scraped at the passage with the wad that had once been his tunic. One hand was keen on the task and the other holding me steady and rubbing comforting circles occasionally on my skin. I had not done a mistake in saving him. He did not deserve to be tainted, pure as he was.

“Let it be,” I told him finally. “You should marry the woman.”

“You are bleeding,” he said in a haunted voice. “I have taken from you more than I can ever repay.”

He was not referring to his carnal wildness. That had happened only because I had not fought it. I was no thrall to carnality. Only he had ever moved me and it would always remain so.

“Marry the woman,” I told him. It was the third time. The third time was always held superstitiously final. I closed my eyes and suppressed a moan as he gently settled me back onto a supine position on the floor and blanketed me with his warmth.

“Don’t speak,” he asked and I nodded limply. I had never denied him anything. 

So we remained, as we were, his cheek on mine and his limbs sprawled over my body and his hair cascading us both with its pure glory. When the dawn broke, he rose and silently dressed himself in what was to hand before nodding to me and leaving without further ado. I stayed on the floor, fingering the bruises and wounds of the night’s storm and wondered bleakly if I could keep them all intact forever if only to reassure myself that I had touched gold one last time.

Then came the sound of footsteps and I closed my eyes. 

“Your fortune is yet in your hands,” said Artanis. 

I made a paltry effort to cover myself, but abandoned it wearily. She had stripped my heart naked. To see my body meant nothing to her. 

“I was never fortune’s favourite, Artanis,” I told her with all the nonchalance I could muster. “I will not play the game.”

“You stand fast then?”

“Eregion shall fall, woman.”

“Then mark my words. He shall marry my niece.”

That proved how little of me she knew. I let her have the last word and dully watched her retreating form before getting to my feet. I made myself presentable and sought a meeting with the daughter of Macalaurë.

 

“My aunt told me that you have a prior claim,” she said without preface as she entered the chamber where I waited.

“You need not fear anything from this quarter, milady. But, I say now, the sun as my witness, not even the Lords of the West can help you if you do ill by him.”

Her eyes widened at the passion in my declaration, but she said nothing. I left the chamber and rushed to the guild to plot my next move. 

Eregion would fall. 

 

“Even if you ruin the entire city, it will not exceed the crater in your heart,” Artanis said quietly as she joined me on the guild terrace.

“You and I shall dance with fate, Artanis. What do you think are the odds?”

“My cousin never bothered with odds,” she replied. “He played only a sure game. You will find that I am of the same ilk.”

I gripped her hand and forced her around so that we now viewed the expanse of the city. 

“This is a cauldron,” I breathed in her ear. “It shall explode when I command it.”

She smiled grimly and brought a hand to my heart saying, “This is what is left in the wake of explosion. A crater.”

He was riding away through the western gate then, his golden hair flying and his clear voice soaring on the wind raised in a traveller’s ditty. Riding beside him was the woman. She was unworthy of him. So was I. But she could at least give him the devotion he deserved. I was condemned to this cauldron.

What would remain for me at the end?

Artanis spoke the answer with the same nonchalance I had displayed in the face of my victims’ grief.

“Caldera.”

* * *


End file.
